I think all we have to do is hold on.
Look at the socialist countries failing already.
If we don't let the Socialists make excuses, don't let them label successes "Socialist" and failures "capitalist", then we're likely to have plenty of examples of why we as a nation do not want to go that way.
Look at what happened to the OWS.
Why stay in such a party?
Many left the party, saying "the party left me".
They're right, it did. And more and more as people abandoned the party to the very people they disagreed with.
Could you imagine if Russia had simply infiltrated us with pro-Russian people who loudly pushed a Russian agenda and we decided that there was too much Russia in the USA so we should all leave it to them?

A John Galt only works if you convince the people necessary to the "revolution" to come with you. Then the revolution fails, the country may fail, and everyone turns to the solution YOU suggest, because you have the resources to do it.

So I remain. It would serve no purpose to leave.
Here, every vote I make is for the least socialist candidate, and imagine if everyone had stayed and voted that way... .

As it is, I'm a roadblock. I take some abuse from modern Socialists in Democratic Party clothing, but tough for them.

I see both Parties as being way in the socialist camp. The Republicans perhaps a bit less, but they carry the religious baggage. The Democratic Party, in its actions, is now indistinguishable from the Communist Party of the USSR. Why would you want to stay in it? It's like in a marriage that may have started well, but is no longer good. Keeping your 50% good will not solve the problem.

Anyway, I don't think that either party can be cleaned up - it will take a major cleansing to get this country out of the abyss that it had plunged itself into. That, in my opinion, can happen only through a total collapse and a civil war. Depressing, but I don't think that there's an alternative. And if that doesn't happen within the next 10 years or less, the recovery will be nearly impossible: the new generation is so uneducated, incapable and unwilling to work, that there will not be anyone capable of rebuilding. We will go the way of Ancient Greece and Rome.

Now help me get them OUT OF MY PARTY!

Bingo.
Nice to have someone see an ethical JFK Democrat for what he is.
Keep up the fight.
I'll be fighting for freedom (real freedom).
Republicans just fight from another angle.
Brakes and Gas for driving, depending on the goal, each taking turns.
Socialists are the monkey wrench.

I get Hillsdale newsletters, as I have contributed in the past, any organization that stands without government funding, which equals government control. Even Capital Univ., which is supposed to be a conservative college, had some professors who were liberal. One of them my daughter struggled to decided if she should go along to get along, or go head on at him when he was trashing Bush and conservative issues. She finally went head on, and wrote essays so researched, he could not fault her without risking his standing. One weekend, she even came home to use our about 2,000 book library of good stuff to get more backup. The Internet is great, but when you are talking out of print books or books not in libraries because of financial or P/C choices, you rely on yourself.

I hear and heed your warning. However, their on-line courses on the Constitution, economics and history are excellent! The only religious aspect in them is as appropriate from the historical perspective. As to their on-campus direction - I don't know, but would like to find out.

I couldn't agree more with your assessment. One thing to expand on - that altruistic bahavior is associated, or dependent, on the ability to sense and process pleasure. If you observe most cases of charitable donations and work, they are made for the benefit of oneself. The congratulations that follow from the surroundings, and often just from oneself, are the source of that pleasure. Observe the people making donations - almost always they want to be observed. Altruism is like a pleasure drug. The problem is that blind altruism is often destructive, to both parties, just like Jane Goodall's video exemplified.

Sellf-Sacrifice is common to nearly every ideology from fascism to socialism and most in-between
Ayn opened it up to say, "Hey, it's okay to be NOT sacrifice" in response to what she saw coming about "donations" and "charity".
When altruism and charity become mandatory, even by virtue of being a "good thing" which if you don't do makes you "bad", it's no longer "charity" - it's a requirement, it's a debt, and it's a step toward socialism.

So JFK Socialist? No.
LBJ? I could add to the list above, but you did a good enough job expressing all the reasons I find his behavior contemptible. He was the first in my party to become a true appeaser of the Socialists in this country.
McCarthy saw the dangers of what was coming and was crushed for it.
Later, when the KGB records came out, it turned out that McCarthy was not just right about what he suspected, but had VASTLY undersestimated the degree of infiltration both Hollywood and the U.S. Government had endured and continued to endure after McCarthy was torn down.
LBJ was just he beginning. That's why the Socialist Party was so confident in stating, in the 1970s, that they would use the Democratic Party as their face to America.
They also noted that in people who had the center of the brain associated with pleasure damaged and removed, that all altruistic behavior stops, utterly. Interesting note, that.

Objectivism posits a unity between thought and action, granted that people are complicated and ad hominem arguments are too easy. If you can find ONLINE classes from HIllsdale, they may meet your needs. However, if you read about the recent history of Hillsdale, you will find something akin to a televangelist enterprise.

I too am concerned with the religious aspect of Hillsdale, but at this point, I'm ready to make a pact with the devil to get away from the government indoctrination.
Hillsdale also has several on-line courses that are free and good for high school kids.

I think that we mostly agree on this, but a few items I would like to challenge (it does make an interesting mental exercise…). On JFK – yes, he loathed socialism and communism. No doubt about that; but his policies were socialistic. Starting with that famous quote. He called for self-sacrifice, which is the number one call of every socialist leader. Often people have the best intentions, but through lack of knowledge, education or just a weak character, the results are far from intended. Just a short resume of unintended disasters that JFK left us with – the Peace Corps, a breeding ground for socialists that later invaded the mainland; the “New Frontier” policy, along with LBJ’s later on, gave us welfare; he established Affirmative Action, which in its core is discriminatory, as evident by the results. And, of course, he gave us LBJ, an uneducated, narcissist, pompous idiot!
On the subject of altruism – I agree with you completely that if a person wants to help others, voluntarily, that’s fine. The problem is that altruism in America is a multi-billion dollar business. The government takes at the point of a gun, but almost everyone else tries to take through manipulation, pressure or a guilt trip. The churches push the guilt trip button, the Girl Scouts push the support our girls button, the food pantries hit the guilt button (you’re supposed to feel guilty for the fact that you work and produce). I once saw a Craigslist ad for a “turn-key charity business” – pay them the money, come up with a cause and start collecting! For 20 years, I’ve asked the “charity collectors” to show me a hungry person, adult or a child, with a caveat that they’re hungry not because they just drank or smoked all they had, and I will feed them. Every time, for 20 years, I get the same pre-programmed response – we know of someone who knows of someone who is hungry. Yes, there’s good in helping others, but in today’s America, that good is like a needle in a haystack.
I wish that I could find a video by Jane Goodall. She began bringing boxes of bananas to a gorilla troupe. When as before each gorilla was an independent individual and provided for their own food, now the biggest gorilla grabbed the box and gorged at leisure. The video shows a previously independent small female crawl over to the big guy and, literally, with her hand stretched out and shaking, begged for the free bananas. This is the essence of welfare.

I get Hillsdale's newsletter, I think it is excellent.

JFK's famous quip was the OPPOSITE of redistribution, and he was an active opponent to Socialism. Helps to point that out.
Altruism has often been pointed out as "socialism", including in calling Jesus Socialist or half a dozen other historic figures. It's a false comparison, because altruism is the voluntary sharing of wealth where one has the means and control to do so.
Constructive Selfishness does not negate altruism - it just recognizes it for what it is - a means to selectively change society for the better by those who create, produce, and sustain society.
Socialism is forced redistribution, the opposite of choice.
The basic premise of the Democratic Party changed in the 1970s, as the Socialist Party stated, publicly, that it would use the Democratic Party as their face to America. They have not only succeeded, but half the representatives presently in my party are members of the Democratic Socialists of America.
Unions were two-fold - they were a way to empower individuals against the abuses of businesses that were not competing for workers, but were cooperating with each other to force worker pay down artificially and abuse them with impunity with unsafe conditions.

They were also a means for socialists to force their own ideology into the mix.

No, I think we can reject the idea of altruism as the basis of redistribution.
What is the alternative? No altruism? No giving by choice by those who wish to? Pass a government law preventing it? That's the OTHER side, the government that Ayn Rand warned us about, getting involved in the freedom we have.
I utterly oppose Socialism, but I oppose any Federal action to empower itself past what is outlined in the Constitution.
That's also one of the foundations my party once held (and does NOT any longer): Freedom.
Socialism is about as far from freedom as one can get, save short term economic freedom. It's a mirage, and always collapses within 75 years. Been tried hundreds of times. Always fails.

You've hit the nail right on the head! The question now is who is to determine whether the discrimination is applied properly or not? You, I, an elected official, the commune or the one who screams the loudest? One can look at it from the philosophical position - Ayn Rand will categorically choose an individual as a judge of his choice of discrimination; the "progressives" will choose the commune; Obama will chose himself as being the judge of you.
Another way to look at it is from the "back-side": -- which results would you prefer? The current trend of "anti-discrimination" policies that are tantamount to censorship, in speech and in action, with force being used by those that scream the loudest against those whose mouths have been taped shut? Or leaving individuals alone and "allowing" open discrimination as the choice of every individual? Will the later choice result in some unpleasant and "unfair" situations - sure. But it will also push those that felt discriminated to prove that they are in fact better people, as opposed to running to the government for protection and food stamps.
I do want to make a caveat here -- although I believe that individuals should be free to discriminate or not as they see fit, in case of government agencies, discrimination must be controlled (illegal). This is because the government operates on public funds and does not have the restrictions and pressures of a private business or an individual. If allowed, the government can discriminate indefinitely and never pay a price for it -- if things go bad, it just raises taxes to pay for its mistakes.

I don't want to "bash" you for being a Democrat, especially that you are obviously finding interest and comfort in a site like this one, but let's start with the basic premise of what the Democrat Party in the US stands for, since at least the beginning of the 20th Century - redistribution, and that is a fundamental wrong, akin of theft. Sure, the earlier Democrats were not so open and blatant about it, but the root of the evil was there all along; it was just a matter of time and power. Wasn't JFK's famous quip "Ask not what your country can do for you..." a call for altruism, the basis for redistribution? I can provide a never ending stream of examples, from every highly esteemed Democratic leader (and, to be fair, from every esteemed "Republican" leader who was really a wolf in sheep's clothing), but the point is that when your foundation is false, so will the eventual results be, as well.

To be fair, bias and discrimination will continue as long as the world exists. Animals discriminate, insects discriminate, why should people not discriminate? Discrimination, by definition, is one's ability to avoid past mistakes, whether one's own or observed or instinctive. The focus should be not on forcing people to abandon their reasoning or instinct, but on the other side to prove that they should not be discriminated because of factors that are either not true or irrelevant. Somehow, I don't see that in our future. Maybe because I'm biased...

What it emphasizes is how one group MUST be given preferential treatment over another because of something that happened centuries ago. While I don't know anyone alive today who was born into pre-civil war era slavery (they would be... hmmm... about 149 years old if my math is correct), it's still used to justify one group (separated from the travesty by generations) getting preferential treatment, rather than making something of ones self.

Ot isn't. However, if you tach children early enough, they will hld those ideas throughout their lives. In general a childs personality is developed by 4 and only an extreamly powerful event will change it. Not true for learning. Learning conditions and modifies other ideas. Look at Nazi Germany and the Hitler your, the Maoist children's cadre's in China. Certain Soviet practices with children and indoctrination. That is why Progressives are attempting to push all types of ideas down into kindergarten and the lower grades. It will stay for a lifetime and condition receptivity to other similar idea.

That's my opinion and you are welcome to disagree.

The State cannot have people actually getting a serious education. That would lead fairly quickly to boys and girls reading the original documents of the founding of this nation and a very different view of life than is advocated by Common Core!